


The Sun Painted Everything in Shades of Gold

by WhatIsExistence



Series: Soulmate AU go brrrr [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Burger King - Freeform, Gen, Not shipping - Freeform, POV Wilbur Soot, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Playgrounds, Soulmates, Sunrises, i walked to burger king and then i walked back home from burger king, shippers don't interact, their sleep schedules are hecked in this, what did you expect?, yes they stayed up until sunrise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28810515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatIsExistence/pseuds/WhatIsExistence
Summary: soulmate/ˈsəʊlmeɪt/nounnoun: soulmate; plural noun: soulmates; noun: soul-mate; plural noun: soul-matesa person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner._______________________Wilbur and Niki go for a midnight walk because they can and also they happen to be soulmates.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: Soulmate AU go brrrr [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112243
Comments: 2
Kudos: 108
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	The Sun Painted Everything in Shades of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who decided to turn this into a series :) 
> 
> Shoutout to Racoraffi, who single-handedly convinced me to write more for this au and turn it into a series. I hope I can live up to what you wanted.

Wilbur watched the crackling fire. Half of his body was off the edge of the couch and dipping toward the ground. A pen dangled from his fingers, the tip of it grazing the wood floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of honey-coloured words scrawling themself across his calf. A smile tugged at his lips.

He pushed himself up and stretched, a yawn breaking free. He rested the foot of the inked leg on the knee of the other, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he read Niki’s words.

‘Wanna go for a walk?’

The moment his brain had processed the request, he was already on his feet and shrugging on a heavy coat.

The cold night air hit his face and he couldn’t help but wince. His inhales felt like they were laced with shards of glass but even so, he didn’t consider turning back. The orange light of the streetlamps cast everything into a shade of reality that didn’t seem real. It was late enough that for the most part, he walked the street alone, his only company the words on his skin, the distant roar of automobiles, and once, the glint of a cat’s eyes before it vanished back into the shadows. He paused every minute or so to check his conversation with Niki, eventually pocketing the pen when they agreed to meet at a park halfway between their houses. Wilbur got their first.

The playground loomed out of the shadows like a shipwreck, stripped down to its bones. He sat on the deserted swing with its rusty hinges. He looped an arm around the chain and let himself sway. Unfortunately, his legs were too long and his feet dragged in the bark, keeping him firmly tethered to this earth.

Niki arrived like a fallen angel; one moment Wilbur was alone and the next, the young woman was two steps away from him and smiling, her newly dyed hair so vibrant in the darkness that it seemed to glow like a broken halo.

“Hey, Wil,” She greeted and he jumped, just a little, as her presence registered. He returned her smile.

“Hey!”

She joined him on the swing set and together, they looked out to the world, two sentinels who had seen it all and yet knew nothing. They traded observations of this pocket of existence and when those ran out, Wilbur offered her little-known facts about the history of playgrounds and their equipment. In return, she wove him a story of how she’d flown off a swing mid arc when she was a child and broken her ankle. He laughed even though he shouldn’t have, and quickly apologised. She told him that it was funny now, looking back and absolved him of his guilt.

At some point, she started propelling herself off the ground, building up momentum until she was soaring through the air just like she’d down when she was a kid. Wilbur watched her, wishing he wasn’t so tall, wishing that his bones were also hollow and didn’t drag him back down, wishing that flight was a gift given to all. He sat there with his chattering teeth and it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t have worn shorts. When he passed the thought onto Niki, she laughed and shook her head and asked if he wanted to go back. He said no.

She mentioned being hungry so they left the shipwreck behind and crossed the sprawling field to arrive at a Burger King.

They tucked themselves away in a booth and while Niki ate a burger, Wilbur stole her fries when he thought she wasn’t looking. She knew and he knew that she knew, but neither of them said anything. That would ruin the fun of the game.

They were the only people in the store which made it both very easy and incredibly hard to keep their voices down. Once they slipped out of hushed whispers that came naturally, lowering their volume again seemed unjustifiably herculean.

Halfway through their meal, Wilbur posed the question, “What would happen if I drew on your leg? Would it show up on mine?”

It was one of those silly ideas that came to you when you were giddy with sleep deprivation and didn’t really make much sense in the daylight. But they weren’t in the daylight, so Niki considered it with a tilted head.

“Hmmm… I dunno. I mean, I think it would just be processed as normal. But there’s only one way to find out.”

So that’s how they ended up asking the cashier of an empty Burger King if they could borrow a pen at three am. The person passed it over with an air of amusement and a shake of their head. Niki propped her leg up on a chair and Wilbur drew a butterfly on her ankle. He glanced down to his own leg and saw the same picture mirrored there. To his surprise though, it was in a deep purple, not the colour of marigolds that Wilbur was used to. Niki let out an exclamation fo excitement and surprise. The employees rolled their eyes at their antics as they tested the limits of their discovery.

No one had ever told them about this feature of soul bonds, though surely they couldn’t be the first to figure it out.

Eventually, they wandered out of the Burger King and Wilbur fished his phone out of his pocket to figure out how they’d never heard of this fact before. In the process, his fingers grazed something else and he pulled out a pen.

He stopped in his tracks and Niki looked back over her shoulder to see him staring at it.

“Did you forget to return the pen we borrowed?” She asked, a smile in her voice.

“No. I- I returned it for sure.”

As realization slowly dawned on him, he looked up at her.

“Niki,” He said slowly. “I think I had a pen the whole time.”

It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny and yet, they both ended up in hysterics anyway. He couldn’t help it. The laughter was contagious.

They stayed out until the sun sprayed the sky in shades of red and gold, the same red and gold that adorned Wilbur’s skin. He traced the letters on his leg as they talked, and in that moment, as they perched on the platform at the top of the playground, the meaning of soulmates fully registered in his brain for the first time. Not the dictionary definition; the _meaning_. The weight behind it. What the word represented, what that bond meant. What it had the capacity to mean.

He took Niki’s hand and he drew a flower on the back of it.

She drew a matching one on his.


End file.
